Lesson plans & technology for the Spanish classroom

some thoughts...

08/05/2013

This summer I’ve made a point of seeing several movies made by Spanish speaking directors. I find it very enjoyable to keep up with my language skills by doing this because I love movies. Here are five of my favorite movies so far.

Blancanieves won many awards, and is one of the most creative retelling of a fairy tale I have ever seen. This 2012 film is Snow White as a bullfighter in Seville in the 1920s. Yes, you read that right! The Cincinnati Film Society screened this art movie at the Cincinnati Art Academy in June. The black and white movie has a beautiful score, but no sound. It is rated PG-13, and I could see showing sections of it in class, although as I post this, I do not think it is available for purchase yet.

Los Colores de la montaña is heartbreakingly beautiful. This 2010 Colombian movie tells about the armed conflict affecting many rural communities in Colombia from a nine year old’s point of view. The movie is not rated, but would probably merit a PG-13 for violence. I plan on using this with my Spanish IV students this year. You can find a wonderful study guide here.

Los Viajes del viento is another Colombian film made in 2009. This movie tells the story of Fermín who wants to be an apprentice to Ignacio, a master musician who plays the accordion. This movie is also not rated, and excerpts of it would be a wonderful addition to a music unit. The cinematography is beautiful, but the meandering plot may not hold students’ attention for a full screening.

El secreto de sus ojos is a 2009 Argentinian thriller. Ricardo Darín plays a recently retired legal counselor who tries to resolve a homicide that has haunted him his whole career. I really enjoy this genre of movies, and was very pleased with this one in particular. This is not a movie that is appropriate for class use. It is rated R, and earns its rating with some strong violent scenes.

El aura is another Argentinian thriller with Ricardo Darín playing the leading role again. A epileptic taxidermist plans a heist in this 2005 movie. I have to admit I did some multitasking as I saw this movie on Netflix. I am not sure if I didn’t feel it was as engaging as Secreto because of that, or if I started multitasking because it wasn’t as engaging.

I hope to see more movies in Spanish via Netflix before school starts. In my queue today: Karen Cries on the Bus, Amador, Madeinusa, Butterfly and The Window. I saw that Valentin is also available, and if you haven’t seen that movie yet, I highly recommend it. Almodóvar’s new movie, Los amantes pasajeros (I’m So Excited) is also showing in theaters, so I hope to squeeze that in also.

What movies have you seen this year? How do you keep up with new movies in Spanish?

07/30/2013

I ran across William Glasser’s quote on how students learn, and I thought I would use it in class this year. I think it will be helpful in explaining active vs. passive learning. I also wanted to expose my intermediate students to some critical thinking verbs in Spanish, so I included a few.

Thanks to SuzyQ Scraps for the digital papers and alphabet and to Universidad de Colima for the list of verbs.

06/13/2013

I am in the process of
earning a few graduate credit hours, and I would like to share some very
interesting online courses available.
This spring I took two classes through the Powerful Learning Practice
Network . The first
course was Blogging 101 and the second was Creative 21st
Century Lesson Plans. Both classes were two weeks long, and each was worth
one graduate credit hour. I found the
content to be relevant and the workload fair. What I like most about these
classes is that I was able to design lessons that I could use immediately. On a later post I hope to go into specific
details about what I got out of each class.
Rest assured both classes are content rich, but because the class is archived,
I didn’t feel pressure to explore all the information in the two weeks that the
class was offered. In fact, I plan on
going back this summer and re-visiting some concepts.

I am currently working on Teaching Foreign Languages Workshop through the Annenberg Learner site . There are 8 lessons to this content rich series, and
I will earn two graduate credit hours when I finish the work. Although I have been teaching for over 20 years,
I have learned a tremendous amount in the first two lessons. The workload is significantly more extensive
than the PLP classes, but they are also very relevant to what I do in class on
a daily basis. If you are not interested
in earning continuing education hours or graduate credit, the material is 100%
free, and the 8 half hour videos are well worth your time to view.

The third site I want to
mention is Coursera. The classes offered here are also 100% free, but you
would need to check with your district about whether or not you could earn
continuing hours for the certificate(s) you acquire after doing the work. Recently Coursera started offering classes
designed by universities in Mexico, so later on this summer I hope to practice my
language skill by taking Ser más creativos .
At the end of summer I hope to participate in
Innovación educativa con recursos abiertos.

If you are looking for a new
perspective for your teaching next year, need some new ideas, want to earn
hours for certification purpose or simply hone your language skills, I recommend
looking into these courses. I hope to post some of the lessons I design from my
summer learning experience as I complete the work.

Thanks so much for stopping
by, and enjoy your summer learning opportunities!

06/05/2012

Next year our high schools will be encouraging students to bring their own device (laptop, iPad, tablet) to school for educational purposes. This is a very big step for any district, and can be very daunting for everyone involved. Tomorrow I will be sharing what I have been doing in my class with my colleagues. I have been writing about my own journey with technology in my Spanish classroom since 2009, and I have picked up a thing or two along the way.

Technology should enhance and not distract from the lesson.

Web 2.0 tools & devices allow students to collaborate from multiple locations & with different schedules.

If the tool is not user friendly, it's not worth using. However, all technology has a learning curve, and the teacher needs to incorporate this into his/her expectations.

Technology allows for differentiation in the classroom, but this doesn't mean we get rid of methods or lessons that work without computers or devices.

Learning a language takes time and practice. The Internet is filled with resources that will support a language learner to develop fluency. It's our job as a language educator to expose our students to those resources, but the students need to actively engage in the language to actually learn it.

Here is the Google Doc I created to share resources and student examples. I am thankful for a great group of students over the past three years who contributed to this document by producing quality work. Please feel free to view, and add your thoughts about language learning and technology in the comment section.

I found out through a student’s blog that one of his classmates wanted to be a marine biologist. One of my cousins, Diego Amorocho, is a well known marine biologist that specializes in marine turtles. Since our last unit of the year had to do with careers and the environment I asked my future biologist if he would prefer to write my cousin a letter asking about his work instead of taking the lesson quiz. At first my student was a little reluctant. He said he felt like his language skills were not up to writing to a “real” Spanish speaker. I assured him that they were, and gave him a link to a video that introduced him to Diego’s work. He came in the next day very willing to write.

I can’t express how thrilled I was by this exchange. I want to thank my cousin for taking the time to read the letter & write back, but also for giving my student an authentic audience that went beyond the school walls. I would love to be able to do this more often. Can you imagine getting rid of traditional assessments in order to have students produce authentic communication with an authentic audience? Our blog project was a step in the right direction, I would just like to be able to personalize even more. I can’t provide a specialized audience for each of my students, but I’m also not sure how to challenge my students to find their own audience, or to even be able to identify their passion.

How have you been able to create a connection between your class and your student’s interests? How have your students found an audience to authentically use the language?

11/30/2011

I like the blog feature that comes with our class Ning. However, I don’t feel that I use the student blogs in a meaningful way. Yet. Previously my students have used their blogs to post written assignments, and I would pair them up & ask them to read & comment on each other’s work. I found that it would take me longer to read and give students meaningful feedback on their blogs than if they turned it in on paper or dropped the document into a network folder in school.

I wanted my students’ blogs to be a place where they could write, read and comment on things that were meaningful to them, but that didn’t really happen. They didn’t have an interest in writing about the topics that I suggested, and really didn’t care about commenting on each other’s work unless it was “for a grade”. I thought that I could use their blogs to connect with Spanish speaking students, but that virtual exchange has had its own set of issues. Sooo...

I’m thinking of how to make the writing and blogging meaningful. I’m in the brainstorming stage of a project I want to roll out second semester. I would like for each of my students to pick a topic of interest to them, and then I would like them to write short blog entries (8-10 sentences) about this topic on a weekly basis. I’ll probably try it out for 4-6 weeks, and evaluate the project at that time.

At this time I’m thinking I will assign “blog buddies” so that every blog has at least an audience of one or two students, but my hope is the kids that share a similar interest will visit each other’s blog. They will need to gloss new vocabulary words for their readers. I also will have them tag each entry by topic so that the posts can be easily found within the class Ning. I will give them class time to work on the draft, re-write and post to the blog. If they need to gather images or take photos, they will need to do that at home.

I will have to come up with a quick weekly check list to keep the grading manageable, and a very focused rubric to be used at the end of the project. I’m concerned that it may become overwhelming to grade, so the final grade will be an assessment of the overarching project rather than grading each individual blog post for each student on a weekly basis.

So far these are the topics I will suggest to my students: fashion/clothing, sports, movie, music or TV reviews, video game tips, easy craft how-to, food, humor posts like Dear Blank, Please Blank... I hope that once I show them some examples, they will also suggest their own topics. I think the key is to keep the posts short and encourage topics with vocabulary that is familiar to them or have high cognate usage.

Sara Conttrell wrote about how her students blog for homework , and she has some great suggestions. I know that her class size is different from mine, so not all that she does will be feasible for me, but the post is a good resource for anyone else who is interested in having their students blog.

I would love to hear from you if you have successfully done something like this in your class. Any suggestions are welcomed.

08/18/2011

One of my goals for this year is to have my students understand the curriculum standards, and see how the work we do in class relates to them. I have created a handout/poster/slide to use at the start of the year in Spanish. The language has been simplified and summarizes the standards. Feel free to use & happy start to the new school year!

08/16/2011

Another great opportunity I had with EF on my China trip was to earn graduate level credit by taking some classes offered through University of the Pacific. One of the assignments for this class was to create a Voicethread on a topic of interest that I was able to explore while I was on tour. My Voicethread will give you my take on what I observed and learned about Chinese education. Please feel free to leave feedback on the blog or on the Voicethread.

08/03/2011

I just got back from an incredible Educators’ Tour in China with EF. Our group was very pleased with the experience, and although I am not usually fond of traveling with a tour group for leisure, I wouldn’t visit China any other way. I’ve traveled with students various times with EF, but this expedition was specifically designed for teachers and professors. We were not able to tour a Chinese school because students were on summer break when we visited, so EF graciously included a visit to EF’s Language Schools in Shanghai. (I was not aware that EF has so many different businesses, including language schools and IB programs.)

On a later post I’ll share some thoughts and insights I have on Chinese education in general, but for now I want to address English as a Foreign Language in China. Chinese students start taking English classes around year 4 or 5 in their primary schools. EF Language Schools and other language schools like this supplement the learning students do in their regular school day. According to our teacher tour guide, Natasha, tuition to a language school can be as much as 6-10% of a family’s annual income for bi-weekly sessions. One of the reasons families are willing to spend this kind of money on a supplemental language learning is because the Chinese schools teach a grammar based curriculum that requires memorization and a “formulaic” approach to learning English, but provide very little authentic practice or language usage.

Our tour started out in the EF headquarters. We had four speakers address the EFL program that EF markets & promotes. Currently EF has over 100,000 students in China alone! The school’s philosophy can be summarized with the goals of their Life Club program. EF wants to expose their students to authentic tasks, encourage autonomous learning, incorporate motivation, promote mixed ability learning and use language in a meaningful way.

Currently they are launching Trailblazers, a multimedia textbook series, written and created by EF. The manga inspired textbook follows the adventures of some teens as they battle aliens who are trying to cause havoc. The target audience is 11-15 year olds, but I think it may appeal more to the 9-12 crowd. I like the concept of having a plot based textbook (rather than a grammar-based), but I have to question how “authentic” scenarios with aliens will be. I understand how the cartoon videos that come with the series may engage a young language learner, but I have reservations about how well they will work for listening comprehension exercises. It is important to keep in mind how drastically different this curriculum is compared to rote memorization that comes with the language classes in a traditional Chinese school. EF is trying hard to create a product that will keep students motivated. EF also has several iPad apps and computer games that supplement their program.

After the presentation our group of 35 teachers & friends broke up into four groups and each group was assigned one specific Shanghai EF language school. Our group had the best experience. Our school was located in an affluent area with beautiful high-rise residential buildings all around it. We had personal student tour guides for our school visit: Sabrina & Jenny. Sabrina, 12, was a fluent English speaker and ballerina, with more poise and personality than I ever will have. Jenny, also 12, was a little shyer, and sometimes required a little help from Sabrina. Our students ranged in ages from 5-16. We visited the youngest language learners’ classroom first just to say “Hi” and “What’s your name?”. Another classroom was testing. The third classroom had presentations going on. After presenting their dialogs, we sat in a big circle and had a Q & A. The students had prepared questions for us, but they felt awkward & self-conscious trying to have a conversation with such a big group listening on, so instead, we turned to the kids sitting next to us and tried to engage them with one-on-one conversation... much more effective. The next activity was a group game using a smartboard. Although classes ended at 4 pm, most of our students stayed on to talk to us in the school’s lobby. A few of the students had traveled to English speaking countries and were pretty close to being fluent English speakers. Most students I talked to wanted to go to the US, England or Australia for university (one of the advertising billboards tag line was “From EF to Harvard”). We found out the school’s director had had a two days to prepare for our visit. We appreciate their time, and I was very impressed with what I saw.

I understand that our experience was not shared by the other 3 groups. One group only had a few minutes of contact time with the students, and another group’s visit was not as organized as our visit was.

Most of our tour guides during the trip spoke English well, even if a couple had some problems with pronunciation at times. I was surprised that most of the staff at the hotels did not speak English at all. Several times during our trip we had young language learners come up to our group to practice English. Obviously the Chinese value speaking English quite a bit, and as tourism in China grows, I believe conversational English will be more prevalent.

Sorry to say, I only picked up a little bit of Chinese during my visit. How do Chinese programs in the US compare? Here is a 2010 article from the New York Times that summaries Chinese language learning.

06/06/2011

Many believe Generation Z children seamlessly manage technology for a variety of purposes. The kids who grew up with the Web, MP3 players and cell phones have been exposed at a much younger age to technological tools that have drastically changed the way we complete tasks. These same technologies have also added a plethora of entertainment options. Despite the exposure these children have had to these digital tools, they still compartmentalize entertainment, their social life and “formal learning”. I believe that students will develop skills that will allow them to navigate more fluidly between each of these compartments, but I have to continually remind myself to be patient about the process.

As some of you have read before I am fortunate to have a classroom set of netbooks. Many, many things have changed about the way I run my classroom since we have had access to them, but I am surprised every year by the time we spend in class learning or reviewing some very basic digital skills. These are a few things I took for granted my students knew how to do:

-Email a document to themselves

-Trouble shoot a frozen screen

-Set up a user name and password that they could remember easily the rest of the school year

-Retrieve the password and/or user name if they forgot it

-Find and use a web site’s help center/support

-Embed a link

-Load an image online

-Use a web site’s navigation menu to find specific information if it is not the first thing that pops up on a site

You get the idea... To be fair, many of my students negotiate these tasks and are a huge help in class as they troubleshoot issues with their peers. However many students who successfully use Facebook, do not transfer over the skills they use on that site to similar tasks needed to do work for Spanish class. This is one example of compartmentalizing.

Here is another example of compartmentalizing outside interests with educational goals. Toward the end of the school year my students had an option to self-select a topic of interest to them and work on it over the course of two weeks. (I’ll describe the project in more detail in a later post.) When given the opportunity to select any topic of interest to them and use it Spanish class, many kids really didn’t know what to pick. Several wanted to do fall back on a traditional report & posterboard. Not only did they have problems considering their hobbies and outside interests as a viable topic, but some still wanted to print out and paste images to card-stock despite having experience and exposure to several multimedia tools.

This was not the highlight of my week. Thankfully I talked to my colleague and Art teacher Rod Vesper (you can read his blog here). He had just visited some students in our district that were part of a 7th grade pilot program that allows students to bring their laptops to school. He was very impressed with the learning and the manner that these kids used digital tools to learn. Seamlessly. He also had experienced some of the same issues that I had been working through. And he reminded me to be patient.

Our students revert to what is comfortable to them. They are well acquainted with reports and posterboard visuals. They are accustomed to teacher-directed activities. It will take some time to shift this mindset. Student need to be exposed to digital tools that can be used for learning as well as personal enjoyment. They need to have the opportunities to develop digital skills to perform tasks for learning. They need to understand that digital skills and tools are not exclusive to entertainment and chatting with their friends. These tools can also be used in the classroom effectively. I look forward to having those 7th graders in my classroom in the next couple of years. Until then I will remind myself that I am doing my part to shift that mindset in my classroom.

If you use digital tools in your classroom, how do you work in the learning curve into your lesson plans?